


In Her Wake

by azurefishnets



Category: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Genre: Compersion, Multi, No infidelity I promise, between canon timelines, fix it fic sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:49:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27176806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurefishnets/pseuds/azurefishnets
Summary: Cabanela radiates life; Alma, dead though she is, cannot help but be drawn to his wishes since she can make no more for herself.
Relationships: Alma/Cabanela (Ghost Trick)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	In Her Wake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laughingpineapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/gifts).



If there’s one thing Alma has long discerned about being dead, it’s that it is _boring._ Dull beyond words, beyond thought…but, if she dwells on that too much, there’s a chance she’ll fade away and that, she cannot let herself do. Not her. Not now. Not yet. She finds ways to keep herself busy.

In the dark days after her death, her house had seemed infinitely empty at first, any attempt in any direction to leave merely sending her back to the moment and location of death, like a looped tape stuck in the player. There’s a part of her that’s stuck here, and it took a long time to realize she could both hold on to that part with fierce determination and yet still be free to roam, a little, in this loop of space and time.

She’s visited Jowd, sad and broken man that he is. She’s beyond much feeling; she’s angry at him but she loves him? Or at least, she remembers that she loves him, but the image he has of her, dead, blank-eyed, threatens to overwhelm the tenuous sense of living identity she’s rebuilt over five double-looped years of being dead. The fire he had is banked to embers and they don’t warm her. She doesn’t like seeing his pained face avoiding her gaze. She leaves haunting him to the symbolism of her painted image and moves on.

On to their daughter and Lynne, growing up without her or Jowd—she sees Lynne’s struggles to gain autonomy and grow up quickly for Kamila’s sake and begins to love her for it. She’s a kind and good-hearted young woman, but they are too busy with the business of learning how to live to need her dogging their footsteps. There’s a warmth there, but they need every bit of it for the day-to-day of living in a cold world that is too often cruel to kind and good-hearted young women. She’s grateful, in a distant way, that Missile is there for them in his own multi-looped fashion, and so she leaves them to their task.

Occasionally she sees the blond man in red. He has something to do with her death, and the sight of him fills her with terrible foreboding. The light he radiates is too pale, too cold. There’s no life in that light. But he, too, is haunted; the spirit who weeps without ceasing at his shoulder gives him more pain than Alma herself could ever inflict, even were she of a mind toward revenge. She is content to leave them all to each other, although she sees the kitten’s struggles in the other timeline and wishes him well.

She had other friends, other joys, other places to see, back in her life, but they seem pale and dim, out of reach of this loop. She does not haunt them in the same way. There is only one other who draws her to his own spark of bright passion, who can pull her from the locus of painful memory. Cabanela is a beacon, overwhelming the lights of the city and drawing her to his fire and light, not only because of the sheer amount of life that radiates off of him but because he thinks of her so very frequently. She didn’t know how very much he dwelled on her and Jowd in life, but in two loops of being dead, she still has not lost her fascination with how his desire burns. It’s not much of a consolation for being dead, but it’s the only one she has.

The lights are bright and dazzling, hot and pinpoint sharp. The gazes of his squad and superiors are no less sharp, if not nearly as dazzling, as they watch him twirl through his own celebration party. He’s made his way through the ranks, working up and up through those who’d said he couldn’t be the kind of person who could be the head of a squad, much less a division. He’s proved them all wrong and done it flawlessly. To the world, this is the culmination of many years’ worth of work. To himself, it’s another show and it _will_ go on as long as he has breath in his body. To Alma, it was bewildering at first, as she learned his patterns and rhythms. Why is he burning himself so brightly? What star is he chasing? Two timelines reveal all. She’s learned how hard he works and for whom.

The music booms through him, vibrating his entire body, and she watches him gladly give himself to the beat and the hot white glare of the spotlights. It’s a party, baby, so let them think he belongs here. After all, for the most part, he does. If there’s a part of him that’s still in that cold, dark, messy house, that’s for him to know and no one else to see…but Alma sees, and understands. She’s been with him there and here too. She’s learned that he chases his own star like a dog chasing its tail, ever seeking the wish that lies at the heart of him. She comes back to this night often. The heat of his triumph in this brilliant moment radiates like the sun.

Cabanela scintillates, dancing and twirling through partners, discarding them as they tire while he never does. Watching him almost makes her feel alive. She can feel his warmth, and she sees beyond the posturing to see how lonely he is, despite the various partners and people she sees him use and lose. If she could feel much anymore, she would feel for him. He and Jowd, their half-lives. They need each other. She wishes she’d seen how much when she was alive. She wishes they could see it for themselves now that she’s dead.

To be there for those she loves, Alma needs to share that fire. She knows she’s not exactly who _he_ needs as he dances, here at his party. In his emotions, the need is there, for Jowd and her both, but she’s dead. She can’t be who anyone needs anymore, but she can still be with him, over and over in this time. This dance is for her and so she slides carefully into place and whirls with him, letting him gallop around the room and delighting in his warmth. It’s so close to feeling. It’s so close to being alive.

Unlike his other dance partners, she doesn’t tire, won’t allow herself to be discarded. She dances with him deep into the night and when he, at last, takes a moment to rest, somewhen around the witching hour, she sits with him, her arms around him. His face, even when he knows he’s alone, betrays nothing, but she feels his will pounding against her with each heartbeat. She feels the wishes he’s making. She herself is beyond wishes now, but she’s seen this time echo and relapse and loop and there are no shooting stars for him. He’s been abandoned by the cosmos, by Jowd… but not her. Not now. Not yet. Not ever, if she had the choice, but the time is coming. She knows it.

He draws into himself; after tonight he’ll be hard and cold and diamond-sharp, plans and calculations for what’s next stretching into the future. She doesn’t like watching that part of his life. She’s shared his warmth; she would give it all back right now if she could to see those dreams he has for Jowd’s exoneration to come true. She would give it all back to him to see Cabanela get the life he deserves.

She disengages and watches the night; she can feel it. She’s waking up, here in these darkest hours before the dawn. She can feel her death calling her, the locus of that dying shock of the bullet entering her body drawing her back to that time and place. She could go back, dance with him again and again and once more even after that, but there’s a time she’s been avoiding for too long. There’s a night he’ll need the warmth she’s hoarded from him. She’s taken as much as she could, all to give it back to him, all to keep him alive. After that… the dawn will come and on that day her spirit will be gone from this looping time. She doesn’t know what waits after that. 

The past calls her, but she has no answer for it. It does not deserve her attention more than the living; she will not return even one more time to the dark memory of the moment of her death. She will not echo the sad and weeping spirit at the man in red’s shoulder or the eyeless dark of Jowd’s fears. She will not watch her daughter in an eternal childhood just to keep herself alive in their memories. She can do nothing more for them now; Jowd has no will to go on and her daughter has other protectors. Alma herself has one last task, for the man who has the will Jowd lacks and will protect her family to his last breath.

She looks at Cabanela once more and learns something new about herself. She’s not beyond wishes at all, and so she wishes she could tell him what she’s realized, what she feels for him, the love she’s learned for his constancy and his brilliant devotion. She wishes she could see the happiness he and Jowd will have when his wish is granted. She wishes for the words that death has stolen from her, but she will have to rely on feeling instead. She leans forward and kisses his forehead, returning just the tiniest hint of the fire he gave so freely. His gaze is drawn up and he looks beyond her, to the stars, as she absents herself for the last time from this endless night of light.

She gathers herself, flinging herself forward to that last darkest hour, clinging to another evening’s Cabanela in the deepest part of that night as he wavers between life and death. In one timeline she’s seeing him die, but in the other, she is the star he chases and she burns to grant the wish he sought. All the light and warmth he’s given her, any love she’s ever felt from him, she gives it all back, for his wish to be granted and for him to live to see it. In this moment, she radiates with his fire, and she gives him all of it, everything she has.

She doesn’t know what’s coming; the loop is closing, the night is ending, and she streaks through it like a meteor. She's fate, a wish come true, a beacon in the darkness. She spares a thought to make a wish on herself; give Cabanela, her daughter, Jowd, joy in whatever comes, for them to have every bit of the light he’s ever given and double, triple, infinite amounts more together. Death is coming, but not for Cabanela and not for her. Not now. Not yet. She is the light and she burns with the life she's borrowed. When she'll go out none can say.

She’d expected to fade to dark, but the light shines brighter and more beautiful with every second. It’s death, it’s rebirth, it’s a new fate: she soars toward the glory of the rising dawn, trailing wishes and hopes for a new future in her wake.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy exchange, laughingpineapple, and I hope you enjoyed it! To be honest, this was just going to be a nice angsty scene of dead Alma dancing with live Cabanela and then...well. Cabanela can't escape explosions, even exploding fic. It is what it is!


End file.
